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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/23384557">Threads</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/PJ_Marvell/pseuds/Sea-Glass'>Sea-Glass (PJ_Marvell)</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>The Magnus Archives (Podcast)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Angst, Canon-Typical Violence, M/M, a guess at what the end of S5 might be, graphic-ish in nature, no happy ending</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-03-29</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-03-29</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-01 15:07:59</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,692</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/23384557</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/PJ_Marvell/pseuds/Sea-Glass</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Here, at the beginning and the end of Armageddon, it all turns on Martin Blackwood and the knife in his hand.</p>
<p>A quick guess at the end of S5, before it begins.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Martin Blackwood/Jonathan Sims</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>12</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>58</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Threads</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>In the suffocating dark, in the vast hungry brightness, Martin counts the threads of Jon’s shirt.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>Flannel, in that faux-tartan so beloved of sensible clothes retailers.  It’s soft from overuse, the One Casual Thing that Jon owned and was therefore trotted out for any occasion where something less than a black jumper was called for.  Martin has spent so long with his face pressed up against it that it smells of both of them, now, with an edge of woodsmoke and heather from those fleeting blissful moments in the remote glens.  Martin would know the shirt with just one finger to press against it - its bobbles are a braille, the chipped buttons an etching.</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Here, in the Panopticon, the wheel around which every terror spins, it’s the familiar feel of Jon’s shirt that keeps Martin from losing his mind.  If the shirt is real, then the floor is real.  If the floor is real, then the room is real, and if the room’s real then Martin can run from it.  He won’t - Jon’s grip on his hand is so tight it’s almost painful - but he could.  If he had to.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“It’s beautiful,” says Jon, in that half-dreamy voice that means he isn’t in that moment entirely </span>
  <em>
    <span>Jon</span>
  </em>
  <span>.  He’s The Archivist, an avatar of the eternal voyeur - not the man who sleeps with his face in Martin’s hair, who has a fondness for highland cattle and can’t quite grow a beard.  Not </span>
  <em>
    <span>Martin’s Jon</span>
  </em>
  <span>.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Martin doesn’t reply.  He doesn’t know if words will leave his mouth, or just a long shriek.  He’d rather not find out - he doesn’t know what would hear him.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“This is the place,” says Jon, a moment later, his words firmer. Martin pushes off that firmness, opens his eyes, takes a breath.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“You’re sure?” asks Martin, although he didn’t really need to.  Jon’s tone had been rock sold.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“It’s here, all right.  </span>
  <em>
    <span>He’s</span>
  </em>
  <span> here, somewhere.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Jon moves forward, eyes suddenly laser-focussed on a spot somewhere through the painful light and Martin follows on behind him like a terrified comet tail, eyes squeezed shut again.  Jon doesn’t seem to notice Martin’s grip on his arm and that’s okay, for now.  Martin can hold on, hold </span>
  <em>
    <span>in</span>
  </em>
  <span>, for a little while.  At least until they find Elias - Jonah - whatever he’s calling himself now.  Then Martin is relying on his rage to buoy him up.  He hopes he’ll remember how to feel anything but afraid.  Hopes he’ll be brave enough to open his eyes when they come face to face with The Watcher in his Crown.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Jonah Magnus,” says Jon, stopping.  Martin feels his heart constrict in his chest, feels the adrenaline spike up his spine.  He shouldn’t be here, he’s not - he’s not - he’s just Martin Blackwood, so useless and unwanted even The Lonely spat him out.  He’s the human brought to a demigod fight.  He’s just </span>
  <em>
    <span>him</span>
  </em>
  <span>, and this isn’t his world anymore.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Jon is </span>
  <em>
    <span>wrong</span>
  </em>
  <span>, though - Martin can read the lines of his shoulders through his grip on the elbow of Jon’s shirt and there’s no defiance, no rod-straight fury.  Jon’s shoulder’s slump as though he’s already been defeated.  </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“What have you done?” Jon says, and his tone isn’t at all right, either.  Martin expected the white-heat of anger, expected the Archivist in his magisterial horror - Martin expected something, anything other than this terrible sadness.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Martin opens his eyes, and beholds the culmination of all the long years of Jonah Magnus’ life.  Jonah Magnus, the king of a broken world.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Once upon a time, anyway.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The body of the man Martin had known as Elias Bouchard lies stretched out on the floor of the Panopticon, arms by his sides, palms turned upwards.  His head is tilted slightly to one side, his hair barely ruffled.  Martin could almost believe he was sleeping, if he wasn’t in a suit and without his eyes.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Martin supposes the burnt-out thing in the chair of the Panopticon is what remains of Jonah Magnus, but honestly there’s so little left of it that it’s only just recognisable as human.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Whatever it is, it’s pointless now.  Because they’re here to kill Jonah Magnus to put the world right again but he’s already dead and the world is still a screaming cauldron of horror.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Jon,” he says.  Jon’s eyes don’t move from where they frown down at Elias’ body.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I don’t understand,” Martin says again.  In the shadows of everything that swirls through this place, he hates most the way his voice wavers, the way you can </span>
  <em>
    <span>hear</span>
  </em>
  <span> his fear for all to register.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Can you see it, Martin?”  Jon’s eyes are fixed on the Panopticon now.  “Can you see the world, how afraid it is?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Martin slides his grip to Jon’s hand, squeezes so tight the bones grind beneath his fingers but Jon doesn’t move.  It’s yet another thing to be ashamed of but Martin can </span>
  <em>
    <span>feel</span>
  </em>
  <span> him slipping away, going away from the man who let him whisper gentle comforts into his hair as they huddled into each other beneath the blankets.  Perhaps Martin should let him go - the whole world has gone that way, after all - but then Martin would be alone. Worse, he’d be alone after being with Jon.  The quality of the loneliness would be worse, somehow.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Martin feels like he should have left his shame behind in the pre-apocalypse, but it’s there nonetheless.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“So much fear,” Jon steps forward, tugs Martin with him.  He stops short of moving Jonah Magnus’ body, but Martin gets the worrying impression he might be thinking about it.  “All the terror in the world, here to watch.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Jon,” says Martin.  “Please don’t.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>That snaps Jon’s eyes away from the Panopticon.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Are you afraid, Martin?” he says, all that preternatural scrutiny now focussed on Martin.  “Of me, I mean.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Martin can’t feel a compulsion, can’t feel the answer being pulled from his throat, but he barely needs to say a word.  The look in Jon’s eyes seems like it can read the firing of his every neuron.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I’m terrified,” breathes Martin.  “But not of you.  Never of you, Jon.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Jon smiles, and there’s something frayed at its edges.  He leans forward and kisses Martin’s forehead, gently.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I don’t tell you enough that you’re marvellous,” he mutters into Martin’s hair.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I know,” says Martin, rubbing comforting circles into Jon’s shoulder blades.  He doesn’t, not really, but it seems to be what Jon needs to hear right now.  “I love you, Jon.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Jon lets out a small, almost broken sound and leans all the way into Martin’s embrace, arms tight around his ribcage, nose pressed into the crook of his neck.  Martin clings back, holding hard onto the hope that </span>
  <em>
    <span>somehow</span>
  </em>
  <span>, this will be okay.  They’ll be okay.  With his hands in Jon’s hair and Jon’s breath warm on the skin of his neck, Martin can almost believe it.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I wish you didn’t,” says Jon, wretchedly, and Martin almost jumps out of the embrace.  Jon doesn’t fight to keep him, doesn’t cling, although he does tilt towards Martin like a flower towards the sun.  Martin scowls at him, and receives only a kicked-puppy look of guilt in return.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“What, </span>
  <em>
    <span>exactly</span>
  </em>
  <span>,” asks Martin, frost forming on the words.  “Is that supposed to mean?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I mean I wish I could have spared you - all this!”  Jon waves an arm at the shadow box of awfulness that is the Panopticon. Waves a quick hand at himself.  “Martin - you’re -”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Really sick of you deciding what’s best for me?” replies Martin.  He knows where this is going - they’ve been here before.  Jon, convinced the loss of his humanity equalled the loss of his right to breathe.  Jon, convinced that love has blinded Martin to all the dangers around him.  Jon, thinking that somehow Martin would be better off without him.  </span>
  <em>
    <span>As if that was his choice to make.</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Martin - I didn’t mean -” Jon’s shoulders slump further.  The rage that had guttered at the sight of Elias’ body flashes back over to a red heat and Martin knows it’s not useful, knows that what Jon needs is gentleness and love but they’ve dragged themselves through untold grief and pain and fear in the long miles from Achiltibuie to Millbank and </span>
  <em>
    <span>damn it</span>
  </em>
  <span>, Martin will not be treated like he is some child dragged along for the trip.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“What happened to you trusting me?” Martin demands.  “What happened to the promise to let me make my own decisions?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“What happened to that?” asks Jon, incredulously, and Martin’s spitefully glad to see a glare forming.  “What happened to that is you ended up in the Lonely and I </span>
  <em>
    <span>ended the world, Martin</span>
  </em>
  <span>.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“And that was my fault, was it, Jon?” Martin crosses his arms.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“No, it was </span>
  <em>
    <span>mine!</span>
  </em>
  <span>”  Jon’s voice cracks like a whip and echoes in the silence it leaves behind it.  “It was mine,” his voice soft and broken again, “and I don’t know if I’m strong enough to fix it.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Martin sighs and reaches out his hands.  “You don’t have to do it alone, Jon.  You never did.”  He ducks his head to catch Jon’s eye, smiles gently.  Truth be told he’s still angry but there will be time for another conversation about this being a partnership later.  But Jon doesn’t smile back, doesn’t step into the harbour of Martin’s arms.  His face almost crumples and he half-turns, scrubbing furiously at his eyes.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I’m so sorry, Martin,” he whispers.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Jon, it’s all right - maybe...maybe there’s another watcher.  Or - or Smirke did something to this place, changed it somehow.  We’ll work it out.”  Martin steps forward and this time Jon doesn’t step away, although the grim lines around his face don’t vanish and Martin isn’t comforted.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I already have,” he says, one hand tracing the line of Martin’s jaw, almost wistfully.  “You see, it was never the Watcher who was the link between the worlds.  It was the Archivist - the </span>
  <em>
    <span>Archive</span>
  </em>
  <span>.  Every record of every dark power, all playing on an endless loop before the eye.  It was never Jonah Magnus who needed to die - it’s me.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“No.”  Martin isn’t sure the syllable was a conscious choice.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“</span>
  <em>
    <span>Yes</span>
  </em>
  <span>.”  Jon is pacing now, parallel to what remains of the Watcher.  It seems to be a coincidence.  “Jonah Magnus was never the link between this world and the next.  It wasn’t his connection that they all rode through.  It was his plan, his </span>
  <em>
    <span>bastard</span>
  </em>
  <span> orchestration, but he had nothing to do with it.  Good old Elias,” Jon turns to glower at his remains.  “Never got his hands dirty.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“We said - Martin, when we were researching, we said that the world could be set </span>
  <em>
    <span>right</span>
  </em>
  <span> again if the Powers’ could be severed from their anchor in this reality, didn’t we?”  Jon is looking earnestly at him, fingers hovering around his arms.  “We assumed that was Elias - Jonah - whoever he is - was the link but he’s just the architect.  I was the one touched.  I spoke the words.  He just wrote them.”  Jon swallows, his eyes heavy and dark.  “It’s me, Martin.  Not him.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“You can’t - Jon what if -”  Martin struggled to make words around the panic growing in his throat.  He wants to be angry again, wants the fury to tamp down the scream that’s threatening to claw its way out of his throat.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I can - I Know, Martin.”  There’s a shimmer in Jon’s eyes that might be tears.  “I can’t See far - I don’t know if it will fix everything, but - it’s me.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“No,” says Martin, and this one is almost a howl.  He pushes himself into Jon’s arms, lets out a few sobbing breaths into his collar.  “</span>
  <em>
    <span>No</span>
  </em>
  <span>.  I love you.  </span>
  <em>
    <span>I love you.</span>
  </em>
  <span>”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I know,” whispers Jon again, more rasp than word.  Martin can feel a damp patch in his hair. “And that’s why it has to be you.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The words take a moment to sink in and when they do, Martin’s knees almost buckle.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Jon-”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Martin - I know, I -”  Jon breathes out, shakily.  “But anyone else would do it in fear.  Another avatar - someone untouched or - they’d kill the Archivist to deny The Eye or to strengthen their god.”  There are tear tracks down Jon’s cheeks.  “You’re the only one who’d do it just because I asked you to.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Martin breaks a little, then.  Time blurs into tears and loss and when he’s capable of higher thought again he’s huddling on the floor with Jon, both of them sobbing like children.  Martin can feel himself tear, somewhere deep beneath his ribs.  He thinks Jon is beautiful, even now, with his red-rimmed eyes and running nose.  In this moment he might be the most human Martin’s ever seen him, scared and crying in the tunnels beneath Millbank.  That vulnerability calls to Martin - makes him want to wrap Jon in blankets and promise to keep him soft and safe.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>But he can’t, because Jon’s logic is flawless and it’s come to a choice between keeping what he loves and saving the world.  If reality is to revert to something peaceful, somewhere in which shadows are just that and nightmares are contained, for the most part, to the sleeping hours, then the man Martin loves will have to die by his hand.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>It’s not a choice.  It’s not a choice at all but it still hollows out Martin’s heart.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He can feel the weight of the knife they’d brought for Elias in his coat.  It’s long, sharp, wicked.  Martin had practiced with it on the journey down.  He knows how it feels to slice, to chop.  To push it between ribs, and find the heart.  It will be, in all but the most important of ways, really quite easy.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Martin looks up - meets Jon’s eye - nods.  Then is wracked by sobs so hard they fold him in half, leave him scrabbling for a handhold on the paved floor.  Jon holds him up, hands stroking through his hair, across his cheeks and over his shoulders as though cataloguing him, although he would not be the one who’d need to rely on memory.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I wish you’d never met me,” whispers Jon, brokenly.  “I wish you’d never heard of the Institute.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I don’t,” says Martin, voice still thick with tears.  “No matter how it’s ending, at least I got to know you, Jon.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I love you,” says Jon, leaning in to kiss him with an urgency Martin had never experienced from Jon before.  It’s vital, desperate - the kiss of a man who, no matter how insistent he’d been in asking for his own death, does not want to die.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Despite that, he barely gasps as Martin slips the knife between his ribs and up, into his heart.  He doesn’t stop pushing until his hand is flush with Jon’s skin.  He’ll do this properly.  He owes Jon that.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Jon lets out a small, high-pitched cry as Martin pulls the blade free, and the sudden warm dampness gushing from the wound and over Martin’s stomach and knee lets him know his strike was true.  This will be quick.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Martin holds Jon all the way through it, whispering the sweetest things he knows, peppering small kisses around Jon’s eyes and rubbing the skin of his scalp in a way he knows makes Jon shiver with pleasure.  He keeps going until Jon’s fingers loose from their grasp on Martin’s sleeve, until his eyes glaze and the steady thump in his neck stops, until he’s still and cooling in Martin’s arms.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Only then, when he’s sure Jon’s gone, does Martin allow himself to scream.  He howls, hearing the tunnels throw his anguish back at him, wails and bawls until his throat is sore and his eyes are almost swollen.  He thinks to look up then, and the Panopticon is just another room.  It’s an odd, atmospheric artefact of a bygone age, but there is no lurking threat, no steady channel of terror into its walls.  Whatever darkness Martin had walked into is gone.  He supposes he should go and see if it’s carried over to the rest of the world.  A world he has, apparently, saved.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>For all it feels as though it’s ended as he lays Jon’s head gently down on the flagstones.</span>
</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Well this has been sitting on my google drive for about three months, I thought it might be time to inflict it on someone else.  It's not beta'ed, so apologies for any roughness and I look forward to hearing it get Jossed in about three days' time.</p></blockquote></div></div>
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